Gale Norton resigned as secretary of the interior Friday. The Cabinet member was praised by industry and reviled by most environmentalists for her pro-development stand. She plans to seek a job in the private sector.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton stands before Longs Peak during a Colorado media briefing in July 2004. In replacing Norton, President Bush has options. Until he makes a decision, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett will run the department.

Washington – President Bush will abide by tradition and name a Westerner to replace Interior Secretary Gale Norton, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said.

And the White House will look for a successor whose views mirror those of the pro-development Norton, Card said.

“We will be looking West,” Card told The Denver Post. “She came to the job with a real appreciation of Western lands. … We will be looking for people who have the same appreciation.”

Since Norton announced Friday that she will resign at the end of the month, Idaho’s governor has emerged as a favored candidate for the post, and several prominent Coloradans have been mentioned.

Norton, a former Colorado attorney general and Denver lawyer, was sent to the Interior Department to correct what Republicans and industry saw as a lack of balance on the public lands of the West – too much preservation and not enough development.

As she leaves, both sides of the debate agree she succeeded. Norton has overseen aggressive efforts to tap federal oil and gas reserves.

Under Norton, there has been a 22 percent increase in coal production on U.S. public lands and a 17 percent increase in natural-gas production. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, part of her agency, went from a backlog of oil and gas permits to producing them faster than companies can drill them.

She also made federal lands friendlier to loggers, snowmobilers and off- roaders.

“Gale Norton has been a strong advocate for the wise use and protection of our nation’s natural resources and a valuable member of my administration,” President Bush said. “I appreciate Gale’s dedicated service to our country.”

“Good riddance,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

“I hate to see her go,” said Kathy Hall of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. “I think she’s done an absolutely fabulous job.”

The Interior job requires Senate confirmation, and Norton’s successor will inherit a number of high-profile policy and political battles.

The Bush administration is pushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore gas and oil fields for drilling. Interior remains stuck in a bitter legal fight over royalties due to American Indians. And conservatives in Congress want to rewrite long- standing environmental protection statutes, such as the Endangered Species Act.

The department also is embroiled in a corruption probe involving convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Indian casino gambling.

Norton has not been implicated in the scandal, and she and her representatives insist her departure is unrelated to it.

“We did not want to see her go,” said Card, dismissing any notion that the Abramoff scandal was a factor in Norton’s resignation. “She has done a fabulous job for the president.”

Norton has told friends that she and her husband want to consider their options for a few months and move back to the West.

Several Colorado Republicans said two-term Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne should be at or near the top of any list of potential nominees for Interior.

“He’d be outstanding if he would do it,” said University of Colorado president Hank Brown, a former U.S. senator. “He’d be somebody who’d be familiar with the issues. He’d be somebody who the president would be comfortable with philosophy-wise. He would be a kind of consensus-builder that might be effective there.”

Kempthorne, a former U.S. senator, is a conservative on land and environmental issues but has governed pragmatically, raising taxes when necessary and brokering compromises on energy and resource issues.

Kempthorne is not running for re-election and has been mentioned as a potential Cabinet nominee in the past. He declined to comment on the speculation.

Former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., said Kempthorne “would be wonderful” but warned that the governor could meet a “buzz saw” of opposition from environmental groups for past stands on endangered species and other issues.

Campbell dismissed suggestions that he himself might get the nod.

Former Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., added Russ George, who heads the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and former Rep. Jim Hansen of Utah to the list of potential nominees.

The names of Gov. Bill Owens, retiring Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado and former Montana Gov. Mark Racicot also have circulated. Owens’ spokesman, Dan Hopkins, said that no one has approached the governor about replacing Norton.

Bush could make a consensus choice and get a successor confirmed before the fall political season is in full swing. Or he could make a more confrontational selection while the Senate is in recess and put a confirmation fight off until 2007.

The Constitution gives presidents the power to fill vacancies during Senate recesses and allows the nominees to serve until the end of the current congressional session. Last summer, for example, Bush named John Bolton, a controversial appointee, to serve as the U.S. representative to the United Nations.

“It stands to reason that anyone the president wants to nominate won’t be someone the environmental community sees as a friend,” said Ana Unruh Cohen, an analyst with the Center for American Progress. “But his political capital is so low these days he may find it hard to find somebody the Senate will sign up with.”

Democrats don’t expect to have much say in Bush’s selection.

“That’s not the way this White House operates,” said James Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Norton – an unsuccessful 1996 candidate for U.S. Senate – all but ruled out any run for office in the near future, saying her “sights are set on the private sector.” She said she’d had no discussions about a job before making her announcement.

Until Bush makes his choice, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett will run the department.

More in News

A member of a "sophisticated cocaine trafficking conspiracy" was convicted Monday in federal court in Denver of conspiring to distribute, and possessing with intent to distribute, five kilograms or more of cocaine, according to prosecutors.

A man who shot two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder, will not be allowed to leave the Colorado Mental Health Institute's grounds without supervision, according to a Jefferson County District Court ruling.

After the San Francisco Bay Area, metro Denver experienced the biggest apartment rent increases this decade in the country. But plenty of new supply should put future rent gains closer to the national average, according to a new report from RealPage, a real estate research firm.